The Parents' Sleep Index: How Tired Do You Feel?

Is there anything more difficult than having a night where sleep is not on the agenda for one or more of your kids? Wait, actually, there is: When the number of hours of sleep you technically got does not come anywhere near to representing the epic scale of your evening, and thus you do not receive the proper amount of sympathy from the people around you. “Oh, six hours, that’s not so bad,” your boss comments when you drag yourself into the break room for your fifth cup of coffee.

As a service to parents everywhere, I have used my own hours of wakefulness during the wee hours of the night to create a Sleep Index. Like how the Heat Index tells you what you need to know to properly complain about the weather, the Sleep Index allows you to articulate how tired you feel, regardless of the number of hours you were actually asleep. Here is the formula:

t = total hours elapsed from time you got in bed at night until the time you got up for the day in the morning (i.e. amount of sleep you should have gotten)

e = number of children who woke up in the night

h = number of hours actually up with the baby and/or other children

a = baby’s age in months (for older children, age in years; if multiple children woke up, age of oldest child)

s = how surprised you were that you were woken up (scale of 1-10, 10 = most surprised)

w = number of times you had to get up

c = total number of children you have

y = number of hours of sleep you got the night before

If it looks too overwhelming for your sleep-deprived brain, never fear! Below I’ll walk you through each step, using the hypothetical example of a woman named Jane who had a night like something out of a Homeric epic. (And yes, this is the kind of thing I think about when I’m up with the baby at 3am. Being a nerd is a 24/7 job.)

A. Take the total number of children you have, and divide it by three.

Jane has four kids, so her result is 1.3.

B. On a scale of 1 - 10, how surprised were you that you were woken up (10 being most surprised)? Add this to the total number of times you had to get up, and multiply that by two.

Jane’s kids usually sleep through the night, so she was quite surprised (a seven on our scale) when she heard her son yelling something about peanut butter and ants and his sheets in the middle of the night. This was only the beginning of the saga, and she would have to get up another time as well, twice in total. (7 + 2) * 2 = 18, so her result for this step is 18.

C. Take the age of the oldest child who woke up (in months if the child is younger than one), and divide it by three. Multiply that result by the total number of hours you were up with the kid(s).

Jane’s six-year-old daughter also woke up, so she’ll divide her age by two to get three. Jane was up a total of three hours, so her result for this step is 9.

D. Add the results of steps A, B, and C together, and divide that result by the number of hours of sleep you got the night before.

Jane stayed up late reading all the fabulous content at the National Catholic Register the night before, so she got about six hours of sleep. (1.3 + 18 + 9) / 6 = 4.7.

E. Multiply your result from step D by the total number of children who woke up during the night.

Between the peanut-butter-and-ants mixture on her son’s sheets and her daughter’s possibly-related nightmare, two of her children woke up. So this step gives her 9.4.

F. Subtract your step E result from the total hours that elapsed from time you got in bed at night until the time you got up for the day in the morning (i.e. amount of sleep you should have gotten).

Jane had gone to bed nice and early at 8:00pm to catch up on sleep, and dragged herself out of bed at 7:00am to get the kids ready for school, which means she should have gotten 11 hours of sleep. So her result for this final step is 1.6.

Thanks to this handy calculation, Jane is now prepared when people expect her to function at a level higher than an amoeba. When she tries to get out of a PTA meeting by telling the president lady about her insane evening, the president comments, “Well, you did still get eight hours of sleep, that’s not bad at all.” Now Jane is able to retort, “LISTEN, WOMAN, ACCORDING TO THE PARENTS’ SLEEP INDEX, I AM EFFECTIVELY FUNCTIONING ON LESS THAN TWO HOURS OF SLEEP!”

Comments

This would be hysterical if it weren’t so true! Like the other commenters, I think you should add something that pertains to my particular situation: a child who hasn’t slept through the night for 3 years.

Congrats to all those co-sleepers who can sleep through the crying, kids and other boisterousness of having a kid (or kids) in bed with you. Doesn’t work for me.

Posted by Mac Daddy on Thursday, Sep 22, 2011 2:24 PM (EST):

I LOVE your formula! Oh my gosh! This is GREAT. I can see that you actually put (what for me would be) quite a bit of thought into it. (And I love how it is weighted in light of conversations with bosses.)

One change: I’ve added an S(sub)1 and S(sub)2. The S1 would be for how surprised you are to have been woken up but S2 is how stressed out you are on a scale of 1-10. Add them together (along with w). Wow! (To balance it better, one could exchange S1 for S2 if one is rarely or never surprised to be woken up in the middle of the night.)

It would be great to also add in here a factor for having Attention Deficit Disorder. As someone with Adult ADD I can tell you that sleep is the MOST important factor in being able to focus the next day. So, when I am a little sleep deprived my ability to function drops exponentially.

What a funny, fun, and actually useful tool! I LOVE it!!! P.S. I HATE math, but this all make perfect sense!

OK. At the risk of sounding like a “fan” of yours, I must say that your writing is… fantastic!

This is awesomeness. (I especially like the surprise factor. Nobody else accounts for the surprise factor.)

Posted by Susan M on Monday, Sep 19, 2011 1:43 PM (EST):

I relate! Altho I never had to explain anything to anybody, since I’m a stay-at-home Mom whose husband was usually up too and as tired, and girl friends with even more children (I ended up with 10) who were equally as exhausted, but not too tired for coffee together…
I would definitely add the extra take-away points for stomach flu, esp for younger children who run into the room, straight for my side of the bed, yelling “Mom, I’m getting….(blurp all over me)...siiiiiiiick!!!!!!”

The other points off come from staying up late at night, listening to the teenager who only decides to “share” after 11pm. I wouldn’t have missed these times for the world, but the early morning toddler nightmares, or nursing baby gave me plenty of time to 1)worry about what the teenager said;2)worry about what I said back;3)worry if this is normal;and 4)worry if I am really the right mother for this job!

Maybe there should be points for middle-of-the-night worrying?

Posted by Harvey on Monday, Sep 19, 2011 1:36 AM (EST):

Can’t you add points or subtract - I have no idea how this formula works- for the level of annoyance that you have if your husband is snoring through the entire saga? I’m writing this at 1:36am because my child has been sleeping through the night since he was six months old! Yeah, right.

Posted by TheInformer on Monday, Sep 19, 2011 12:55 AM (EST):

THANK GOD FOR THE SINGLE LIFE!

Posted by Kara on Sunday, Sep 18, 2011 10:23 PM (EST):

Haha!! Perfect!

Posted by Mike McCants on Sunday, Sep 18, 2011 1:04 PM (EST):

Hilarious nonsense.

Posted by Marilyn on Sunday, Sep 18, 2011 6:51 AM (EST):

You really are an unusual lady - love it! I can’t believe how you’re not too sleep-deprived yourself to come up with this stuff.

Posted by Sherry on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 10:12 PM (EST):

PMI—love it. Thanks for the laugh.

Posted by StephC on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 2:20 PM (EST):

Jen, this is great. The only thing I would try to factor in to the equation would be “how many lightening round games of 3 am ‘Unbridled Panic’ (see Simcha Fisher’s posting) were played?” And somehow multiply that by the 1-10 factor of the “degree of surprise” awakenings you mention.

Posted by LUNTFAMILY on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 1:31 PM (EST):

Where do I insert business owner and kids over 20? My theory is that I will get to sleep through the night when I go home to the good Lord (my resting place). Until then children at home, children away from home, menopause night sweats and being a business owner will continue to disturb any resemblance of a normal sleep pattern. Maybe my formula should just read: CRAZY times 10 = sleeplessness!

Posted by JaneC on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 7:56 AM (EST):

Awesome. There’s one inconsistency in your explanation (in step C you divide by two, but the formula says to divide by three), but the formula itself is awesome. I don’t have kids yet, but I have a little formula worked out for being awakened in the night by a dog and a snoring husband…

Posted by Vicente Camarillo on Saturday, Sep 17, 2011 7:23 AM (EST):

Hahaha… Great approach for this true problem! I loved it! Starting today, I will use it not with my boss, but with my 15 years old son who is always complaining about going to bed “as early as 10 pm”.

You made my day with this I’m an engineer, just like one of the posts above says, and I really got fun with your formula… Thank you… :)

I recommend a fold-out couch in front of the largest T.V. in the house turned to late night episodes of Scooby-Doo on the Cartoon Network. that is how I have survived every waking night since children entered the scene!

Posted by Barbara C. on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 5:18 PM (EST):

Anna, I am with you. I keep them in the bed with me until they are 4. It’s so nice when they are cutting teeth or going through the night terror stages to just be able to pat them on the back or whisper comforting words in their ears without having to get out of bed. I also love being able to gauge fevers for little ones easier. I get so much more sleep than I otherwise would…which is so scary when I think of it.

Posted by Renee on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 5:12 PM (EST):

It works. I came out at 2 hours (rounding up) with a one month old, the youngest of 9 children. And that is quite accurate, and makes more sense of my complete lack of short term memory. What was I saying?

Posted by Kristen J on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 4:32 PM (EST):

As a non-math person (very, very math-averse!), this was a blast! :) Our sixth child in six years is due in a little over a month. I just ran my “typical” newborn night and tallied about five hours of sleep out of eight attempted. That sounds about right—and by “right,” I mean accurate, not “right” as in just or appropriate! ;) I think Jen should make further adjustments for moms who have a certain number of kids under five and/or homeschool!

Posted by Laura on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 2:35 PM (EST):

Wow, that’s an actual thought-out formula, you’re crazy :)

Posted by Anna on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 2:17 PM (EST):

I couldn’t have survived without co-sleeping. I had tried everything and read half a dozen books on the topic. At eighteen months I finally let my firstborn sleep with my husband and I. My mother accused me of being a hippy but I was too tired to protest. I have been pregnant or breast feeding for roughly 25 years now, so after eight kids, I can say that it really worked for us. Breastfeeding around the 24 hour clock also spaced the pregnancies nicely. (Every time they nurse it sends a message to the mother’s brain to suppress ovulation) Toddlers graduate to the bed of an older sibling who keeps them company. My eight-year-old reads to my five-year-old almost every night! Just make the place the baby sleeps in your bed very safe, and not between you and your husband, who also deserves your loving attentiveness!

Posted by Sarah M on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 2:12 PM (EST):

My total calculation is -2. The math doesn’t look right but trust me, that feels just about right. Glad I’m not the only one!

Posted by Kaylan on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 1:53 PM (EST):

I’m on the same page as Bekah. I get up so much with our children that I often can’t recall how many times I actually got up. Not to mention, I wake up in the morning and try to remember what I was going to do next after walking into the kitchen. Yes, tired is tired! Great post!

I will admit, if I do get to bed on time (9-ish, before 10-ish), I feel SO much better and function SO much better as well. I can do that exercise tape which I loathe AND bake bread and all the other little goodies that I need to do on top of taking care of the kids, doing college classes, etc.

Posted by RMMT on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 1:40 PM (EST):

I second the one about adding some index in there for pregnancy, particularly related to what stage in pregnancy you’re at (i.e., take the weeks of gestation one is currently at, divide by 2, and add 1 point for each measure of discomfort—I think I’d score about a 20 here). I would further add in some kind of multiplier that would account for the difficulty of handling the awake child—e.g., nightmare rates at 4, stomach flu rates at 12 (more if you have a mess to clean up), etc. I think adding these factors in would give a more comprehensive view of things… it would also allow me to say, “I’ve effectively been up for 38 solid hours, buddy, so don’t cross me!”

Great post, Jen—love it!

Posted by Babs on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 1:20 PM (EST):

Yeah, I like it, except the math part. I’m just gonna go with “I’m functioning on less than 2 hours sleep according to the JF Sleep Index.” But the math looks good to me.

Posted by gradchica on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 1:11 PM (EST):

There should be a calculation for moms who are currently pregnant that takes into account how many times the baby kicked you awake/how long it took the baby to stop kicking and rolling so you could actually get to sleep/how many times your poor put-upon bladder woke you up/how many times your horrible hip-back-ligament-whatever pain woke you up/how many times you got your body pillow tangled in the sheets when trying to roll over and woke yourself up. These can also be scored with additional info, such as how many times you tripped over the cat or stepped on a toy on your way to the bathroom, waking you up further, etc.

Posted by Bekah on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 12:15 PM (EST):

Brilliant! You are obviously getting more sleep than I am. I can’t even count the number of times I was up, not because I can’t count that high, but because I have such chronic sleep deprivation with my 6mo twins that I have forgotten how to count.

Posted by Matthew Warner on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 12:05 PM (EST):

Awe-some.

Posted by Emily in FL on Friday, Sep 16, 2011 11:48 AM (EST):

I’m a HUGE MATH GEEK (minored in it just for “fun” along with my engineering degree), and I’m way too tired to tackle that one this morning.
GREAT post, though - SO TRUE!!!

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About Jennifer Fulwiler

Jennifer Fulwiler is a writer and speaker who converted to Catholicism after a life of atheism. She's a contributor to the books The Church and New Media and Atheist to Catholic: 11 Stories of Conversion, and is writing a book based on her personal blog, ConversionDiary.com. She and her husband live in Austin, TX with their five young children, and were featured in the nationally televised reality show Minor Revisions. You can follow her on Twitter at @conversiondiary.